Principal Investigator

Honors & News

June 3, 2011

UR Research Group Wins Provost Multidisciplinary Research Award

A current study by researchers at the University of Rochester entitled,
Perception of Music and Language through Auditory Interference,
has been selected as the recipient of the
Provost Multidiscipliary Research Award.

The work is based on the ability to filter interfering auditory signals from a
primary stream is a basic aspect of social and musical communication. Musical performance requires
continuous attention to a complex auditory signal: how does this expertise interface with the processing
of linguistic signals? Is auditory filtering ability facilitated by musical training?

In order to explore the above questions, this study brings together researchers with expertise in the
following fields:

March 22, 2011

A mother's iron deficiency early in pregnancy may have a profound and long-lasting effect on the
brain development of the child, even if the lack of iron is not enough to cause severe anemia, according
to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the scientific journal
PLoS One.

What convinced us to conduct the present study were our preliminary data suggesting that cells involved
in building the embryonic brain during the first trimester were most sensitive to low iron levels, said
Margot Mayer-Proschel, Ph.D., the lead researcher and an associate professor
of Biomedical Genetics at
URMC.

The specific aim of the project is to determine efferent feedback strength in children and adolescents with ASD when compared with typical controls (age, gender, and IQ matched). The project will build on existing measures of MOC strength using two different otoacoustic emission-based tests with short and sustained binaural broadband suppression to obtain maximal efferent feedback strength in both ears of all participants.